Egalitarian Dialogue and Equality of Differences
The recognition and respect of different types of knowledge raises the awareness that each person has something to share, something different and equally important. Therefore, the wider the diversity of voices engaged in egalitarian dialogue, the better the knowledge that can be dialogically constructed. In this sense, dialogic learning is oriented towards equality of differences, stating that true equality includes the right to live in a different way (Flecha, 2000). This perspective, which Paulo Freire (1997) calls unity in diversity, never defends diversity or difference without simultaneously proposing equality and fairness toward different individual and groups.
Equality of differences is also enacted in the Learning Communities (Valls, 2000; Elboj et al., 2001). The Learning Communities are schools in Spain, Brazil and Chile that have undergone a process of educational and social transformation based on dialogic learning. In the learning communities, the equality of differences principle is shown, among other practices, in the interactive groups (Aubert et al., 2004), where students and adults who have different levels of instruction and are from different backgrounds, teach and learn from each other. Those interactions create Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978), this showing that meaning making and learning do not depend solely on the intervention of professionals, but on all the knowledge brought by anyone related to the students (Flecha, 2000).
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